Campaign cash run amok? It’s worse in California

Chris Baral holds a sign during a San Francisco protest last week against the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance. Photo: Pete Kiehart/The Chronicle

Think last week’s McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission decision, where the Supreme Court said rich guys could give to as many congressional campaigns as they like, is, to quote San Francisco’s own Nancy Pelosi, “a very existential threat” to our system of government?

Cheer up. Things could be worse. It could be California.

Despite decades of efforts to change, reform and revise the state’s convoluted campaign finance laws, California politicians have sources of political cash that federal candidates can only lust after.

Up until last week, no individual could give more than $123,200 in contributions to federal campaigns in a two-year period, with a limit of $48,600 to individual campaigns and $74,600 to political action committees.

Because congressional and Senate campaigns carry a $2,600 contribution limit, that meant someone who wanted to give the maximum $5,200 (split evenly between primary and general election campaigns), was limited to backing just nine candidates and seven PACs.

Not anymore. On a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that those aggregate limits were unconstitutional, allowing deep-pocketed donors to give that maximum to all 535 House and Senate campaigns and $5,000 to as many PACs as they can find.

That’s chump change in California, where donors already can give $4,100 per election to Assembly and state Senate candidates, $6,800 for constitutional-office hopefuls and up to $27,200 in the governor’s race.

That’s actually tougher than the way it used to be in California. Up until Proposition 34 passed in 2000, there were no limits on what any one donor could give to a candidate, which explains how Gray Davis could collect $1.2 million from the California Teachers Association for his 1998 run for governor and why state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who is retiring this year, still has about $2 million in his “Lockyer for Lieutenant Governor 2018” fund, money left over from the $10 million he collected pre-Prop. 34 for a run for governor that never happened.

Along with the lower contribution limits, federal candidates also are barred from accepting direct contributions from corporations and unions, although businesses and labor can and do give through PACs.

That rule would be a game changer in California, where a quick look at Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2014 re-election contributors reveals names like Occidental Petroleum, Walmart, the California Apartment Association, Facebook and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, among many, many others.

Opponents of the Supreme Court ruling worry that by allowing contributors to give the maximum $2,600 to an unlimited number of congressional and Senate candidates, more and more politicians will become beholden to those wealthy donors. But even ignoring the estimate by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics that fewer than 600 donors in the country gave the federal maximum allowed in 2012, the individual campaign limits are set so low that any new contributor is likely to become just one of many.

For example, Ro Khanna, who is challenging fellow Democrat Mike Honda for a San Jose-area congressional seat, already has received more than 500 maximum checks for his campaign, with more assuredly on the way.

Higher limits don’t necessarily trim that number by much, at least in California. Brown already has nearly 250 contributions that hit the state’s $27,200 maximum for the governor’s race.

In at least one place, though, the new Supreme Court rules mimic the best of California, since any new money flowing to candidates has to come with a name attached and the type of disclosure the Golden State has required for years.

It also means candidates will be directly responsible for that new money and how it’s spent. That’s a big step up from having some “independent” committee use even more contributions from nameless donors to slam an opponent, with the candidate benefiting from the attacks standing on the sidelines with his hands up saying, “Hey, don’t blame me.”